Elizabeth Hitch

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​SCC Student Gains Confidence and Leadership Skills in an Unexpected Place

A third-year biology student, Elizabeth Hitch, gained more confidence and leadership skills while at Santiago Canyon College (SCC) thanks to helping her peers participating in Supplemental Instruction.

During the summer of 2016, Hitch took part in a research program with California State University, Fullerton (CSUF). At one of the program’s workshops, former SCC students came to talk about where they were now after going through SCC’s programs and being a Supplemental Instruction (SI) leader. SL leaders are students, who along with faculty and SI supervisors, help their peers through the academic assistance program designed to help students in historically difficult math and science classes.

After taking this workshop at CSUF, Hitch signed up to become an SI leader. Through this experience, she was able to create lasting relationships with faculty and her peers.

Hitch was an SI leader for animal biology and, in one session, her peers were having a hard time with classifying organisms. She ended up showing them how she had studied and memorized this, which was to create a table with a picture to make it easier to remember. “I had so many students come up and say how much this trick had helped them,” she said, “It was so gratifying to hear that I had helped them be successful with a difficult subject.”

With this technique of making a table to study, the students Hitch taught could use this for other subjects to study difficult lessons. The fact that these students used it and it really did help them helped her gain more confidence in her leadership skills. With this newfound confidence, she was able to open up more and in turn the students trusted her more.

Since being an SI leader for animal biology, Hitch has been an SI leader for other subjects. She will also participate in the summer research program for CSUF again this summer after graduating from SCC.